New Studemont Apartment Tower: Out of Styles

This is the best image we’ve been able to find online of the 25-story apartment tower about to go up at the site of the former Ed Sacks Waste Paper Co. at 440 Studemont, just north of Memorial Dr.

And it makes you wonder: Do these out-of-town developers really know what they’re doing here? First they give the project a name — “Legacy at Memorial” — that makes it sound like a funeral home, in a town where death is already a major industry. Then . . . they think Houston residents will stand for 15 percent of the units in the combination highrise-lowrise development being marketed as “affordable housing.” But weirdest of all . . . it looks like they forgot to give their building a theme!

Memo to Legacy Partners and your California retiree funders: Your tower is going up against some aggressively themed competition. When renters can go next door and feel like they’re in Italy, or go down the street to get a little stucco taste of New Orleans, or cross Allen Parkway for a full-fledged Beaux-Arts Alamo resort revival, just who do you expect is going to want to want to live in an apartment that looks like . . . a building in Houston, Texas?

More on the tower that forgot to put on its clothes and makeup . . . after the jump.

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The development will have 330 units, and is expected to open in November 2009. An article on the Legacy at Memorial in Globe St. gives style-conscious renters some hope: The development may have been altered significantly since the drawing above was made public.

“It took awhile to redesign the building and rework the plans,” explains Spencer Stuart Jr., senior vice president and Texas partner for the Foster City, CA-based Legacy Partners tells GlobeSt.com.

“This is a great luxury project that will give some people a very nice place to live at an affordable rate,” Stuart adds. Legacy at Memorial will have a three-bedroom penthouse, totaling 3,568 sf, and the balance will be one- and two-bedroom units, starting at 868 sf. Projected rents are $1.26 per sf to $2.20 per sf.